Transcript of conversation with Amaia Gabantxo
Jo Reed: Well, can you just talk a little bit about translating. Because people often think you're doing this word-for-word,. And that's not the case. It really an interpretation, is it not?
Amaia: Yeah, totally. Translating literature is a creative process. It's the same process as creating something from scratch, I think, because you have this original text, but then you have to make it work as a piece of literature on its own. And for that, as I say, you can't be traumatized by the lexical meaning of what was there before because literature isn't just words. Literature isn't just words. You know, when you put several words together in a sentence, you create a world. And that world is not going to be the same world if you just repeat word by word what was said in there. see, when I read something in Basque, there are all kinds of evocative things that come with it, you know, because every word will remind me of something or will be associated to a song, a lyric, something my grandmother said, something my father said,. That's how we, all of us, approach language. So, a translation that, you know, is a good translation, has to do that all over again, you know. And you can't just say, okay, you know, gori is red, because it isn't just, you know. There are so many things that come with gori and so many things that come with red. You know, there's a whole universe behind it. And this is the kind of journey that I always strive, you know, to undertake, because it's for me, translating literature isn't just something that I do because I can speak the languages. It's something that I do because I love literature, you know, and I am trying to create more literature and to give people literature that they wouldn't otherwise have access to, which is really sad, you know. There should be more opportunities to translate books because I think that the Anglo-Saxon world misses out a lot of amazing literature. Only three percent of books published in the U.S. and the UK are in translation, you know. And you're missing out a huge world of literature, and it's a very sad state of affairs.
